Activism for working folk.

2019.09.04

Action: concerning war in Yemen, methane pollution, and discrimination.

Both Houses of Congress have passed defense spending bills that include amendments that would get our soldiers out of the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen and stop our government from selling weapons that kill good Yemenis -- but, of course, now both Houses have to go to Congress, and some folks who should know better (Sen. Reed of Rhode Island, for one) are making noises about ensuring they pass a bill that our President will actually sign. How many times must I tell these pimps! You do the people's will, and you let the President take the heat for ignoring it! I tell you, they've got some serious Stockholm Syndrome sufferers in our Congress. Hence Avaaz provides some phone numbers: you can call Sen. Reed at 202.224.4642, Speaker Pelosi at 202.225.4965, and House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith at 202.225.8901, and tell them to keep anti-war amendments in the defense spending bill. It has to pass, after all, so our Congress holds all the cards here. They ought to start acting like it.

Meanwhile, our Administration has announced its final proposal for methane pollution limits -- and of course they're gutting them, because if a regulation actually protects good Americans from corporate pollution, it cannot stand! (Alternately, if President Obama issued a regulation, it cannot stand!) Allowing gas and oil drilling corporations to leak methane from their wells and pipelines willy-nilly not only packs a bigger climate-change punch than coal emissions do, they also deprive good Americans of royalties if the drilling operations are on public lands -- methane is, after all, a usable energy source. Hence Penn Environment, Environmental Action, and the Environmental Defense Fund all help you tell our EPA to reject its own proposal to increase methane pollution. Why bother telling our Administration to do things they don't want to do? Because they're taking public comments on it, meaning they have to come up with a very, very good reason to ignore the public will, or else the courts will smack them down -- as they've done to a great many of our Administration's regulatory "efforts" so far.

Finally, our Administration is also trying to let corporations get federal contracts and discriminate against people on the basis of their "religious" "conscience." Using religion as an excuse to discriminate is an old scam -- folks used the Bible to justify slavery, after all -- and using "religious" "conscience" to (for example) fire pregnant workers, avoid hiring gays, and force transgender employees into the wrong bathrooms isn't significantly different. Chances are it ultimately won't pass Supreme Court muster, since our Supreme Court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case that closely-held corporations (i.e., ones with a handful of owners), and not just any old corporation with a knuckle-dragging CEO, can exercise "religious" "conscience." But this Administration doesn't care about law and order; they only care about stoking rage in their votaries. Hence the ACLU helps you tell your Department of Labor to reject its own proposal to allow federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of "religious" "conscience."

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